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“You should’ve forced her from the stage, Lady Finch. You should’ve threatened to show her the door.”
Merry Fortune leaned against Lady Finch as the two peered through the purple curtain that separated the dressing room from the Palace’s central stage. The walls shook as the polishers stomped their boots to the rhythm of the drums booming through the club’s speakers. Chandeliers swayed. Glasses teetered and shattered upon the floor behind the bar. Lady Finch’s other dancers set down the serving trays Satinka’s presence forced them to carry, and they drifted towards the exits.
Indigo Satin pressed against Lady Finch’s back. “You’d both better exit through the dressing room door with me and Vivian. There’s never been enough doors in this place in case of a fire, and I hate to think of how hard it’s going to be to escape this deathtrap once the polishers bring down the ceiling.”
Merry Fortune took a step back. “You should never have let her dance tonight, Lady Finch, and all those polishers should never have been given a surprise holiday.”
“I promised Satinka that I’d never pull her off of the stage,” Lady Finch growled. “Hasn’t she given us all enough of the shiners she’s earned to deserve at least that promise?”
Lady Finch held her breath as she watched Satinka dance from the other side of that purple curtain. Motes of plaster fell from the dressing room’s ceiling. Mirrors toppled and shattered upon the floor. Soon, Lady Finch feared that the polishers would rattle the Crystal Palace upon its foundations if they stomped for much longer.
But just as the dressing room’s suspended lighting swayed, Satinka collapsed into a ball upon the stage. The buffalo hides covered every peek of her flesh. The buffalo horns of her headdress pointed towards the polishers, who ceased stomping their boots as they stared at the crumbled dancer.
“What are you doing, child?” Lady Finch growled. “You can’t break down. Not now. Not after you’ve brought all that polisher blood to a boil. Get up and finish your dance. They’ll bring the Palace down on top of all of us if you don’t get up.”
And then, a great bellow rumbled from beyond the Palace’s walls. The polishers ripped their eyes off of Satinka and turned their gaze towards the Palace’s entrance. The bellow roared a second time, booming above the polishers’ heads, its echo surrounding them as they stood, dumbstruck, in front of Satinka’s stage. Low grunts answered the bellow’s second call. Some surge of power flooded outside of the Palace, and the floor beneath the polishers again trembled. The air soon filled with the sounds of snorts and grunts, with the noise of pounding hoofs, with the vibration of thousands upon thousands of hooves stampeding just beyond the Palace’s front entrance.
Satinka rose slowly from her dark ball of fur. The polishers turned their attention away from the main entrance, away from the strange sounds that grew louder and louder on the other side of those double doors. The polishers again looked towards Satinka. Satisfied she held their attention, Satinka threw back her head and stepped out of the buffalo hides to expose her full figure to those polishers who, night after night, had come to her stage to offer their shiners as tokens of their adoration. Satinka still refused to accept any of those coins. She ignored any of the shiners the polishers tossed upon her stage. She was a dancer unlike anything the Crystal Palace had ever seen, and she would demand a very different kind of trophy. Satinka leaned back her spine and screamed a warbling cry that summoned a third, great bellow from beyond the Palace’s walls.
A new magic gripped the polishers, who tossed their shiners to the floor before rushing out of the Palace’s entrance, warbling and screaming as the chamber emptied in a wink.
Lady Finch’s steps jangled upon abandoned shiners as she walked through her Palace’s purple curtain. She had never seen so much treasure gathered by any of her girls. Confused, she turned towards Satinka, who grinned when another great bellow shook the walls.
“What’s going on, Satinka?”
“Look for yourself.”
Satinka pointed towards the Palace’s entrance to indicate Lady Finch’s answer waited beyond that threshold. Indigo Satin, Merry Fortune and Vivian Vixen timidly peeked their heads through that purple curtain, waiting for Lady Finch to walk across all the shiners between Satinka’s stage and the door. Satinka refused to say anything else until Lady Finch reached the entrance, where she found that even Tarence had rushed away from his post at the sound of one those massive bellows. The ground rumbled as Lady Finch opened the door. A roar filled her ears. Dust choked the night, though there was no wind blowing from the wild lands in the east. She heard the shouts of men, and the roars of beasts. The dust cloaked her view, and Lady Finch knew she would have to take a step beyond her threshold to see where all the polishers had flown.
She took that step, and the dust parted to show Lady Finch the bedlam responsible for such din. A giant herd of buffalo, a river of browns, tans and blacks, rumbled all along the river’s eastern shore, tossing great plumes of dust into the sky to dim the full moon’s light. Lady Finch’s eyes widened in awe as she watched the beasts thunder onto the bridges spanning the river’s waters to take that thundering heard onto the narrow thoroughfares snaking between the city’s tall, glass spires. Lady Finch’s mind stammered. What space did that thundering herd hope to find amid the narrow alleyways between those towers?
That mob of polishers, who a moment before had been stomping in front of Satinka’s stage, gave chase to the herd. The men sprinted for as fast, and for as long, as they could alongside of the herd, throwing whatever rocks and pieces of glass they could find at the creatures’ thick hides. Some of the polishers jumped into automobiles and roared their engines upon the heels of the buffalo. Polishers climbed buildings, and from the rooftops they shouted upon the herd that thundered such dust into the sky.
Lady Finch heard the jangle of shiners from within the Palace, and Satinka appeared at her side.
“What have you done, Satinka?”
Satinka stood wearing only her horned headdress, and she grinned to see a screaming polisher chasing the buffalo.
“I’ve given them life,” Satinka’s words barely lifted above the herd’s thunder, “and all those men will worship me for it. For as long as they chase the herd, they will be hunters instead of polishers, and they’ll love me for it.”
Lady Finch raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve achieved your first wish, but do you truly think you possess the magic to live forever?”
Satinka turned to reenter the Palace. “You’ll witness me achieve that wish as well. Just give the earth a little more time to rumble. Give the dust a little more time to fly. There’s no need to hurry the delivery of my immortality.”
Lady Finch doubted anything was impossible as she looked upon that stampeding buffalo herd. She closed her eyes, but all those buffalos remained when she reopened them at the sound of another hunter’s screams. It was too incredible. What would happen to that shore of glass towers? How could they stand when the ground teemed with such powerful and thundering creatures? Satinka had danced, and the polishers had stared, and Lady Finch doubted anything would ever return to what it had been.
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Polish, Dust and Sparkle Page 8
